Sean Duffy’s War on Transportation Security

The Trump administration may perchance merely wind up doing extra to discourage flying than climate activist Greta Thunberg has. Inner a week of Donald Trump’s inauguration, two separate plane crashes in basic U.S. cities killed 74 people. Investigations into the D.C. and Philadelphia crashes are ongoing but maintain raised fears about the security of the country’s air traffic. 

Making an are attempting to allay these concerns, fresh transportation secretary and dilapidated fact TV shroud personality became congressman became Fox Industry host Sean Duffy mentioned in a January 30 news convention that “you’re safe” flying within the U.S. He added that the United States has “the most safe airspace on this planet.” Love a selection of his White Condominium colleagues, Duffy—who’s bought almost no expertise with both transportation points or handling a $110 billion budget—has forged no longer decrease than partial blame for the fracture onto the Biden administration and its vary, fairness and inclusion initiatives. “They were centered on altering the name from ‘cockpit’ to ‘flight deck,’ or, ‘perceive to airmen’— they wished to swap it to ‘perceive to air mission,’” Duffy told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday, referencing the Federal Aviation Administration’s administration below President Biden. “They centered on E.V.s and sustainability and racist roads, things that don’t subject in terms of security.”

This argument, which reporters maintain came across no proof to bolster, offers a window valid into a wider approach taking shape within each the broader administration and the Department of Transportation, in teach. As Duffy’s Department of Transportation chides the Biden administration for prioritizing “woke” insurance policies over “security, effectivity, financial prosperity, and regulatory reform,” its dangle preoccupation, to this point, looks to be demonstrating that it’s far “anti-woke.”

Among Duffy’s first acts quite than job was once an recount indicating that DOT lending, grantmaking, and contracting have to serene prioritize communities with “marriage and delivery rates greater than the national moderate.” The language of that and any other sweeping memo signal the division may perchance merely are attempting to withdraw funding from cities and states for such infractions as issuing “vaccine and veil mandates” or failing to collaborate with federal immigration authorities by increasing sanctuary cities. The upshot of all here’s that substances of the country that aren’t in lockstep with Trump’s agenda may perchance safe it mighty extra difficult to take care of their roads and mass transit systems in safe, working recount.

While most up-to-date plane crashes maintain introduced about concerns about air security, vehicle commute stays far extra deadly. As Kea Wilson wrote for Streetsblog, the most up-to-date DOT memo’s “commitment to ‘the accessibility of transportation to households with young young people’ may perchance sound benign—unless you preserve in mind that in actuality doing so would require confronting the devastating mark of universal vehicle dependence on American households, one thing neither Duffy nor Trump is proposing.”

Relatedly, the division’s first press originate after Duffy’s affirmation, issued on January 28, launched his first motion on the job: “signing a memorandum directing crew to originate up the approach of resetting Company Reasonable Gasoline Financial system (CAFE) requirements, that can eventually decrease the worth of a vehicle for American consumers and rep rid of the electrical vehicle mandate.” It’s an peculiar recount. Gasoline economy requirements require that the vehicles carmakers promote exercise gas extra efficiently, i.e., that they rep extra mileage per gallon of gas. The so-called “electrical vehicle mandate” build in region by the Biden administration doesn’t mandate that automakers promote a particular number or percentage of electrical vehicles, or forestall consumers from making an are attempting to search out gas-powered ones. DOT estimated that the incremental improvements in snappy-huge gas economy that these principles require will put passenger vehicle and gentle truck drivers bigger than $600 over the lifetime of their vehicles. Heavy-obligation pickup and van householders are estimated to place bigger than $700.

Duffy, by disagreement, calls the principles “burdensome and overly restrictive,” arguing they’ve “needlessly pushed up the worth of a vehicle in recount to push a radical Inexperienced New Deal agenda.” Vehicle costs maintain indeed risen over the final several years, however the Biden administration’s original CAFE requirements—finalized final June—don’t seem to maintain mighty to enact with it. With the exception of the worth pressures of offer chain constraints and rising hobby rates, U.S. automakers maintain spent a protracted time specializing in making greater and extra costly vehicles—in fragment to skirt gas economy regulations and enhance profit margins. White Condominium policy may perchance merely properly ship the worth of vehicles soaring even additional. While on preserve for now, Trump’s proposed 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada threaten to elevate the worth of original vehicles by anyplace from $1,000 to $9,000. While in Congress, Duffy led an effort to improve Trump’s tariff powers. 

Section of the exorbitant mark of vehicle possession, furthermore, is the skyrocketing mark of vehicle insurance. The worth of full-coverage vehicle insurance rose by bigger than 25 percent nationwide in 2024 and by bigger than 40 percent in some states. Drivers in Nevada, Michigan, Florida, and Louisiana now exercise bigger than 5 percent of their earnings on vehicle insurance premiums, on moderate. 

In some unspecified time in the future of his time in Congress, insurance interests were Sean Duffy’s high marketing campaign contributors. Duffy—who served on the Condominium Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing, Community Development, and Insurance—raked in $887,612 from political motion committees linked to the insurance industry from 2009 to 2020. He got $49,500 from American Property Casualty Insurance Association, a substitute lobby for dwelling, auto, and industry insurers. The National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies issued a lovely endorsement of Duffy as he went thru affirmation hearings. In a letter to the management of the Senate Commerce Committee, NAMIC’s senior vice president of federal and political affairs wrote that the lobby “had the privilege of working with Representative Duffy on several initiatives of monumental importance to our participants and their policyholders,” having named him their Federal Legislator of the Year in 2017. 

With Elon Musk persevering with to purge the federal crew, U.S. transportation networks—whose crew are already stretched to their limits—may perchance at this time change into even less functional than they already are. That Duffy within the period in-between looks to be treating his Cabinet put up esteem a never-ending Fox Files section doesn’t inspire mighty self belief that extra planes gained’t drop out of the sky.